August 1947 was / is the month during which the prototype of a Canadian icon, the de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver bushplane, first took to the sky. The happy day was in fact 16 August 1947. The story of that aerial icon began before that happy day, of course. What is this I hear? Can it be true? Really? Yes! To paraphrase the Thing, one of the Fantastic Four, a superhero team you should know and love, it is pontificating time! Sorry. Realising full well that it would probably / almost certainly

Over the past few years, yours truly must admit that the relatively limited number of pontificating road transportation texts aimed in your general direction have dealt with microcars – or farm tractors. I would like to fire my broadsides in a slightly different direction today with a peroration on bicycles. Not any boring bicycle, mind you, nay. You undoubtedly expect something more, my sophisticated reading friend. I shall therefore enlighten you with a text on what appears to be the second

The Avro Lancaster was a large British bomber airplane, manufactured by A.V. Roe and Company (Avro), that entered the Second World War in April 1942 and was best known for nighttime bombings of German cities. It was one of the first British bombers to feature four engines, which allowed it to carry a very large bombing load, more than 6,000 kg, as well as enough fuel to fly more than 2,600 km in a single flight. The Lancaster could reach speeds of 438 km per hour and had a high-altitude ceiling

Greetings, my reading friend, greetings. As many people around the globe take stock of the 75th anniversary of Kenneth Albert Arnold’s now famous 24 June 1947 sighting of 9 unidentified flying objects, soon described as flying saucers, moving at very high speed near Mount Rainier, in the state of Washington, it would be interesting to look at the early days of the modern flying saucer phenomenon through the eyes of the papers aimed at the major segment of the population of what could be